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Charles Cooke

Stand with Wendy death

In March, Heather Busby of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas complained about these regulations in The Texas Observer. “It’s ridiculous,” she said, “to argue that ‘Oh, abortion clinics can just simply comply with the regulations’ when we know those regulations are costly.” This is a quite astonishing thing to hear. Have we finally found the one thing that progressives do not wish to regulate? If so, what are we to make of that one thing’s being the buildings in which unborn children are murdered? If “safe, legal, and rare” is more than just another rhetorical dodge, now is the time to show it.

Unlike the chanting members of Tuesday evening’s zeitgeist, I do not stand with Wendy and, unless you wish to be an extremist, nor should you. Gallup records that 80 percent of Americans think that abortion should be illegal in the third trimester, and 64 percent think that it should be illegal in the second trimester. Americans in general favor Texas’s bill by 48 percent to 44 percent, with women supporting the measure in greater numbers than men. Sixty-two percent of Texans support “prohibiting abortions after 20 weeks.” It is not the friends of Texas’s bill that are out on a limb, but its enemies.

As a rule, people winning wider political battles do not invade their legislatures and scream. On Tuesday night, demonstrating a combination of genuine media savvy and animalistic frustration at not getting their own way, the diehards in the crowd shouted loudly enough to kill a bill that the majority wants. They will not prevail for long.

Blowback

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The law that Wendy Davis and her fellow “pro-science” acolytes so bravely stood against would have rendered it illegal to kill the child after this point. And when I say kill, I mean kill. I mean break bones, rip apart limbs, crush skulls, drain fluids, still a beating heart, annihilate a brain that is capable of dreaming, and crush a nervous system. I mean: Kill.

I was pretty amazed by the cries of foul in progressive forums because the bill wanted abortion clinics to meet health standards. People were saying that to force them to do so is a back door banning of abortion. I guess it all comes down to abortion being so important that to question it in any way is unacceptable.

i’m very grateful for this article. pro-lifers need to continue to do what this article does: cut straight through the bs. no sugarcoating. no downplaying. no worrying about “offending people.” hit hard. we will not rest, and we will be heard.

As I’ve said here over and over, abortion is not my issue, and I’ve never voted based on it, but I’m really sickened by this. Only a sadist could be in favor of elective abortions after the baby is this developed. I mean, I eat meat and I used to hunt, but I wouldn’t kill an animal, even an insect, by pulling it apart. That’s barbaric to do to any creature, and certainly to a human fetus as well. Hopefully there will be a big backlash against Davis for going against the majority of Texans on this.

I wonder if there’s a way to describe abortion as a medical procedure without letting on that it is an abortion? Then you could ask these ghouls if said medical procedure should be regulated so that the patients are protected from unscrupulous practitioners and unsanitary conditions.

Naturally, you would then reveal their hypocrisy in a public and embarassing fashion.

We need to make this personal (without being threatening). Show pictures of the baby (Frieda?) who survived birth at 21 weeks, and talk about how Wendy stood up the right to rip her legs off and crush her skull.

This Wednesday, the Texas Senate failed to pass a bill restricting abortions in its state… It was a fairy-tale ending for Texas Democrats — the fairy tale being Cinderella… I was told as a child that lawmaking is like sausage-making: You’re happy with the results, but you never want to find out how they were made. I hold the opposite: The laws that pass are ugly, but the way they get put together is marvelous. Once you get to see the system, you’ll say the same.

Let’s clarify something, too, since I’m sure a troll somewhere will use this approach: a mob is not democracy in action. A mob is a group of people acting violently* and achieving results out of proportion to their numbers because of the violence of their actions. Sit-ins are not democracy in action, they are a mob action (I’m going to occupy someplace where I do not legally have a right to be until you do what I want). Shouting down a normally functioning legislative body is not democracy in action, it’s mob rule (I’m going to interrupt someone else’s activities until I get what I want). Protesting in front of a business in such a way as to frighten away customers is not democracy in action, it’s mob rule (I’ll just be so obnoxious out here that all your customers will be afraid to encounter me, and I’ll get my way).

Protesting in front of a business in such a way as to frighten away customers is not democracy in action, it’s mob rule (I’ll just be so obnoxious out here that all your customers will be afraid to encounter me, and I’ll get my way).

Protesting in front of a business in such a way as to frighten away customers is not democracy in action, it’s mob rule (I’ll just be so obnoxious out here that all your customers will be afraid to encounter me, and I’ll get my way).
I agree. This especially applies to abortion clinic protesters.
Armin Tamzarian on June 27, 2013 at 3:27 PM

It’s exactly democracy in action. Democracy is mob rule. Thank god we have (or used to have) a representative republic.

It’s exactly democracy in action. Democracy is mob rule. Thank god we have (or used to have) a representative republic.

nobar on June 27, 2013 at 3:33 PM

No. Democracy would be voting to achieve those ends, without a middle-man between the citizen and the law. Mob rule is when a group gets to shout down or otherwise extort their will onto the populace, regardless of majority opinion. The problem is that democracy 1) isn’t really sustainable above a certain population for logistical reasons (and technology mitigates that, but doesn’t eliminate it) and 2) degenerates into mob rule after a certain point. Of course, so does a republic if you don’t fight to keep it.

I agree. This especially applies to abortion clinic protesters.

Armin Tamzarian on June 27, 2013 at 3:27 PM

You’re misconstruing what I wrote. If you actually read the parenthetical, it obviously doesn’t cover embarassment. As long as the protesters aren’t engaged in actions that frighten away customers (and that has to be based on a ‘reasonable man’ approach, not the opinions of ignorant people who are ill-informed*) they aren’t a mob. There’s a huge difference between a bunch of burly men angrily waving signs and threatening people with violence if they approach a certain business, and a group of people quietly praying and asking people who approach a business if they would like to talk about their baby. If those people are kept away from the business because they feel in their heart they are doing something shameful, then it’s not a mob. If those people are kept away because they fear for life and limb, that’s a mob.

Thank you for providing the opportunity to clarify for the slower readers in the group what I meant.
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* Yes, there are people who will claim “Oh, I was so scared those mean people would tackle me and beat me up to keep me from killing my baby, so I didn’t go in.” These people are disingenuous or very ill-informed.

Just to be clear, nobar, “Democracy = Mob Rule” is a very useful rhetorical device when talking about the difference between a democracy and a republic. It isn’t useful where you’re actually facing true mob rule (violence overwhelms the majority – though, yes, the mob can sometimes be the majority). This is one of those times when you can set aside the one set of definitions for the other in order to be clear.